SOURCE: “The Birth of Client-Centered Therapy: Carl Rogers, Otto Rank, and ‘The Beyond’,” in Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 35, No. 4, Fall, 1995, pp. 54-110.

In the following essay, Kramer presents a professional analysis of Rank's importance in the formation of psychoanalysis.

Carl Rogers always acknowledged that the thought of Otto Rank inspired him more than any other, early on, when he was still doing therapy in the old-fashioned “directive” way. Scholars duly note a link between Rank and Rogers, usually with a perfunctory nod to one or another of Rank's ideas, such as “will” or “relationship therapy” (Gendlin, 1988; Raskin, 1948; Sollod, 1978). But almost no one has considered this link to be worthy of much more than a footnote in the history of psychology. Recently, however, while editing a collection of Rank's American lectures, I became curious about the relationship between Rogers and Rank. I knew that Rogers had a personal...